Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday October 28, 2011 @10:03AM
from the stop-glaring-at-me dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The days of dealing with very reflective glass panels may soon be behind us. Nippon Electric Glass has used the FPD International 2011 conference in Japan this week to show off its new 'invisible glass' panel. What NEG has done is added anti-reflection films to both the front and back of the glass that are only nanometers thick. Look at a typical sheet of glass and you will see about 8% of the light reflected off of it. With NEG's anti-reflection film in place, that is reduced to just 0.5%."

Some inexpensive laptops, too... my $400 Dell Vostro V130, for example, has a really good 13" matte screen on it.

And you bring up my first reaction to reading this article.... "great, until it gets covered in fingerprints and dust". I definitely prefer a matte screen since I started working in an area where there's sunlight.:)

Pretty well every other laptop maker does the same! At least I can get a MBP with an anti-glare screen. Some makers don't even offer that choice but hey, don't let the facts stop your anti apple ranting.

I don't know why I'm bothering to reply to a AC, but in fact my primary computer was, until recently, a 17" Macbook Pro with the extra-cost matte screen. So, yes, I am quite aware of Apple's policy about anti-glare screens. It's worth noting that only the 15" and 17" Macbook Pro laptops have that option. If you want an iMac or a 13" laptop, or an external display, you are forced to get the pro-glare screens.

I would never get an iMac, just because of the screen. However, I've found that the screen on my

It used to be that a matte screen was the *default*. Then Apple started making everything with a glossy screen and sold it as a "feature". In the showroom, glossy screens look better, so everybody started selling glossy screens to look sexy. Now, matte is an upgrade -- if it's even available *at all*.

Although, Apple is the only manufacturer that promote highly reflective glossy screen as a feature. That joke at Apple expense was funny and deserved.

Most of the laptop manufacturers advertise it as a feature, but they use their particular trademark names like TruBrite or Color Shine, Ironically, Apples trademark name is "Glossy Display". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossy_Display_Branding [wikipedia.org] (Is the Ahtec brand really this feature calling it "Glare"? Seems appropriate if true.)

The glossy screens sell well as the colors do look sharper in the store, but I think most people end up hating the glare and just think that laptops should not be used outdoors

The Sony XBR-HX929 series produces deeper black levels than any current LCD or plasma TV, giving excellent overall picture quality. It evinces accurate shadow detail and color... One of the best-performing LED-based LCDs we've ever tested, the expensive local-dimming Sony XBR-HX929 competes well with the top plasmas.

That's a really cool coating, but will it be destroyed the first time you have to wipe off dust/fingerprints/etc...? I've had this problem with anti-reflective coatings in the past, especially when they get wet for some reason.

The coating goes on both sides of the glass. You might wipe off the top layer, but I bet the bottom one will stay.
So at the very least, I would expect a reduction from 8% glare to 5% glare, as opposed to 0.5%. 8 to 5 is still a over a 37% percent reduction.

Durability is a HUGE issue. Anyone that wears glasses knows that when you get the anti-glare coating, that means the glasses are impossible to clean and will scratch if you even fart too close to them.

If they do this and it can withstand 10 psi of pressure on a 000 steel wool wad for 500 strokes witout any damage, I am suddenly very interested.

It's not just durability. Anti-reflection coatings also fail when someone touches the display and leaves behind a fingerprint: the oils in the fingerprint are thick enough to make it reflective again, so they really show up.

Yes, but I can think of damn many "no touch" surfaces like monitors, TVs, glasses, picture frames, glass doors, windows and so on that would benefit. It's not like everything has to be touch even though it's the new megahype.

One of my friends is a monitor toucher. I called him out on it one day and he claimed he didn't do it. I stopped him in the act and pointed it out. He apparently never realized he did it. I got so sick of cleaning the screen of my laptop I keep by the couch.

I wonder if this will be applicable for laser optics? Those guys normally pay a huge amount for anti-reflective components. Also optics inside camera lenses. Complex lenses like common zoom lenses [artandstructure.com] have lots of elements, and having light bouncing around all over inside the lens doesn't help image quality any.

This is very old hat - quarter wave plates are hardly news. You can't even make a good zoom lens without it. I'm guessing what's new is the durability of the film, so that you can use it in more expsed places than the inside of a lens array.

My anecdote: I also have an anti-glare coating on my glasses. After less than a year I started noticing what looked like chemical etching on my lenses. I work with chemicals but I never wear my glasses anywhere but at home (where I don't work with chemicals). I take them to the eye doctor to check it out. It was the coating coming off the lenses. So the thing I paid extra for to prevent me from not being able to see through my glasses made me not be able to see through my glasses. (and they wanted to charge

Although, I suppose the advice is still valid... it probably is a good idea to change your IUD every once in a while also. I would assume. Having a T-shaped piece of plastic shoved up your bajango is not one of my areas of expertise. I will defer to the Apple users on this topic. (... and cue the flame war... it was a joke, people).

A bit off-topic, but I have found that using a very mild dish-soap and water to clean my glasses and drying with a soft cloth or paper-towels helps to preserve the anti-glare coating. I used to use Windex to clean them but found that it just ate up the ant-glare coating. The worst thing you can do is to use your shirt-tail to wipe your lenses clean, might as well take a piece of steel-wool to them.

If it's anything like the anti-glare coating on my glasses it will be very sturdy indeed. Of course that coating adds a pretty good chunk of change to the cost of the lenses, but it works like a charm and stands up to repeated cleaning with rubbing alcohol.

Oh, I can't wait for this to show up on phones and tablets! It is probably my #1 complaint about modern capacitive touchscreens. For example, I could use my Xoom as a mirror, before applying an anti-glare film on it. And films are hard to apply, sometimes not pretty, and sometimes reduce the touch sensitivity.

I read that birds have been seen flying into trees and hillsides. There is a reason we have the term "bird brained", birds are not smart and will fly into all kinds of things. Solid things. Things that are plainly visible. We'll see them run into windows because the window is transparent enough that a person can see the bird. Also, the glass does not deaden the sound as much as a solid wall meaning if we didn't see it then we'll hear it.

Uh, yeah, the GP said "window" not "wind" (I see how you could get those two mixed up). I do, however, agree with you. I'm not saying we should get rid of coal-fired plants, but we should also have wind turbines, solar panels, and nuclear power as well. Energy diversity is the key to all of this.

I don't think anybody should get out of high school without understanding density, mass, and gravity! Somehow people fail to grasp the concept of 1 lb of tiny coal turning into a HUGE volume of gas (let alone the chemistry involved that actually cause it to gain weight.) We have unlimited air is the belief; thinking its like invisible land or something; completely ignoring its density.

How would a firm grasp of density, mass, and gravity help understand how burning a pound of coal results in around 3 pounds of CO2? Does burning it make gravity around the dense mass of coal more intense?

I am typing this from a 13" glossy Macbook Pro, and I think there's a misunderstanding about why people buy glossy screens. The glossy screen is the perfect Apple screen because I can simultaneously see the two most important things in the world: the blog I'm reading, and myself. Always myself.

Also the reason for the camera that faces you, when your holding the iPhone properly. Really FaceTime... no one ever uses that. It is made so you can admire yourself actually being on the screen of an iPhone. Its the closest you ever get to iHeaven.

We all know that the perfect monitor screen resembles (or should resemble) a highly polished mirror, and that the viewing of films, games, software or the web is a secondary effect that some people find occasionally useful.

I think he is commenting on the recent trend of displays moving to glossy screens where in the past this was not a desired feature. In fact, I have found the trend towards glossy screens a step backward as well. Sometimes you end up seeing yourself staring back at you more than what's supposed to be on the screen. Hence the sarcasm about displays evolving to a perfect mirror.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that no one outside of your bizarre fever dream knows that.

Bingo. Yes I (lucid) dream about this most nights and await the day when monitor manufacturers wake up to my reality. For now, I've resorted to buying tailor-made mirrors to cover the TV and 2 monitors we have in this house. Friends remark at how wonderfully new and high-tech they look all the time, and I'm inclined to agree. That's what it's all about.

But I would do anything to have them pre-installed like this to begin with.

The reason I ask is - is this regular, breakable glass, or can you put some Gorilla Glass on top of it? And if you did, would it then become reflective again? Can this new extra-transparent glass be made extra-hard like Gorilla Glass?

I think even if it can't, and if you can't put Gorilla Glass on top of it without losing your extra-transparency, I'd still prefer this on my cellphone/tablet. At least that's not a worry on monitors.

This sounds interesting - I wonder if these coatings are the same as the coatings that are regularly applied to premium telescope eyepieces and refractor objectives?
I know that there are very expensive multilayer coatings that can guarantee 99.9% transmission across the visible wavelengths when applied to an air-glass surface. It's very cool to see a lens with these coatings as from and angle it will be almost black and rotating to face-on it will effectively disappear.

When people start using this stuff for windows in buildings, I wonder how the bird population will be affected....

And if I'm wondering that now, you know PETA will jump on it later. Hmmmm-imagines typical naughty imagery they use somehow involving invisible glass this time-This might be worth it after all. Kill the birds!!

Birds will be better off. They won't see the reflections, thinking there's trees behind the glass. They'll see what's actually behind the glass. Now, if you put a bunch of trees on the other side of the windows...

1. AR (anti-reflection) coatings [wikipedia.org] have been available on photographic lenses for decades. Even the ultra tiny lenses in your iPhone/Blackberry/Android phone have AR coating. AR coatings are *always* nanometers thick, by their very nature.

2. AR coatings have been available on eyeglass lenses for nearly as long. Most people these days get some sort of AR coating on their lenses.

3. AR coatings have been available on framing glass to protect valuable paintings, photographs, and other items in picture frames for the same scale of time. Drop by your local framing / art supply store and check out what's usually called museum glass.

4. AR coatings were used on nearly every CRT by the time sales started to plummet in favor of the LCD. I use a couple of them in my lab to this day.

5. AR coatings are already available on some laptop screens (eg, by Sony and Samsung, no doubt among others).

I have a painting with AR glass. It's a big improvement over regular glass, but it's way, way more reflective than the glass seen in the photo.

Also note from the WP article you cited:

It is possible to obtain reflectivities as low as 0.1% at a single wavelength. Coatings that give very low reflectivity over a broad band can also be made, although these are complex and relatively expensive.

Don't forget how TVs, monitors and Laptops all have shiny frames so you can get glare off that as well. Plus they look like crap as they attract finger prints. The last lasrge screen monitor we bought at work had a decent anti-glare screen but the frame was horridly shiny. We ended up spray painting the frame with flat black paint is was so bad.